1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to high speed printing apparatus and more particularly to means for moving multiple, unglued plies of paper into a printing apparatus for printing thereon through carbonless transfer material or interlayered carbon paper.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the printing industry generally and the banking industry particularly there is a need or a requirement for printing multiple copies at high speed of data which is amassed from other sources of information such, for example, in the banking industry, as checks and deposits. In the computer art for example it is known to employ special cut form folded, edge perforated, multi-ply paper for printouts. In this application the paper is driven through the printing mechanism by means of parallel, oppositely disposed "tractors" which straddle the edge perforations of the paper and by means of vertical projections which protrude through and penetrate a short distance into the holes in the paper, the paper is moved into and through the printing apparatus.
The foregoing requires specially designed and formulated paper and paper driving tractors to perform the multi-ply printing operation. The paper and tractor mechanism combination is costly, noisy and requires personnel maintenance to avoid clogging and jamming of the tractors.
As the size of the printing apparatus has decreased, little or no room has been left for the outboard tractor devices. In the modern, modular, demountable printing apparatus used in many banking applications the design of the printer is such as to accommodate only a single ply of paper or with difficulty two glued plies. However, in most banking situations there is a need for two or more plies of unglued paper since one copy of the check amounts to be processed is attached to the bundle of checks and routed to the clearing house while the second copy of the printed material is maintained as an archival record for proof purposes.
Presently, the solution to this problem has been to glue the two plies together to prevent misregistration between the top and bottom ply. Again, this is costly and cumbersome to handle and requires special paper rolls. Since registration of both copies is of prime importance in maintaining adequate and clear data record proof, to date the glued paper has been the only means available to the industry. However, it must be pointed out in this connection that as the glue sections are burst apart or breakdown in use the obvious misregistration occurs so that in the final analysis the glued copies are really not much more than a make-shift solution to the basic problem.